Tuesday, September 04, 2012

welcome to September...

...and happy birthday to me! I've already been out to lunch with the Daughter and am looking forward to dinner with the Husband. I haven't accomplished much at work today, which means I need to play catch-up tomorrow. However, I got a lot accomplished over the weekend.

I found a dress for the wedding. I'm OK with the dress...I just don't wear dresses that often any more. It's sleeveless, which could be an issue given that the wedding is in Aptos (Santa Cruz area) and it could be cold. I have a sweater I can wear with it, and if I finish it, the new wrap I'm weaving will go well with the dress.

I'm making good progress on the wrap. The yarn color is called Blueberry, so I named the wrap project Blueberry Thrill. It's looking good so far:

Bluberrry Thrill shawl, in progress

We turned the work table around in the studio and I like the orientation much better, The only disadvantage it that you can see what I'm storing under the table (the spinning wheel, the stitching stand) when you walk into the room. I'll have to see if there's anything I can do about making them less obvious.

I got most of the little things put away that were on the studio work surfaces. I reorganized some of the drawers and labeled a bunch of them I still have quite a few to label, but I'm getting to the point where most of the remaining drawers are "Tools" and "Misc." I don;t have too much a problem withe tools because I have lots of them. It eh "Misc" drawers that bother me!

We finally hung the IKEA panels to hide the washer and dryer. We hung the rail without too much of a problem. However, the panels were a giant PITA. I chose rice paper and bamboo panels because we wanted shoji screens, but could not justify the cost. The panels were very reasonable priced. Now, I am a very experienced assembling boxed furniture...I cut my teeth on RTA Danish furniture in the 70s. But these panels, kicked my @$$.

The panels are 118-inch long--you cut them to the length you need, and you need make sure to cut them square. Then you attach a flat bar to the panel end and push that into the panel rail. Except that if your panel has a bamboo piece (round and almost the same diameter as a bamboo skewer) that ends up on the part that must go into the panel rail, you're hosed. There is no way it will fit. I had to figure out how to remove the bamboo from that piece of the panel without ripping the paper and wrecking the entire panel. Fortunately, a few wet paper towels applied to the back of the bamboo piece loosened the glue so I could carefully remove the bamboo. Then I had to wait for the piece to dry before I could continue.

Once I had the panels ready, I couldn't figure out how to make them work together. It was at this point I wanted words on my instructions...the pictures totally failed me. I gave up and hung the panels. They work on the track independently and I think they look good.

IKEA panels hide washer & dryer

and view showing the craft alcove:

Studio alcoves

I'll attack that working together thing after looking at some of the videos and when I have more patience!

OK...a little more work and then it's home for my birthday dinner!
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